Presidential Election of 1860

     As I heard my classmates go one by one in front of the class, one of the presentations stood out to me. It was the one on the presidential election of 1860, which had such a lasting impact on history. For those who do not know, this was when Abraham Lincoln was elected. The big controversy around his election was that he did not support slavery. Southerners were scared that he would outlaw slavery, so they swore that they would leave the union if he was elected.

Presidential Candidates & their stances

    In the 1860 Republican National Convention, Lincoln was up against William Seward, a senator for New York, and was selected after three sets of voting. The Southern and the Northern democrats were split up over the idea of slavery; the South wanted to continue slavery, while the North opposed it. There were several arguments over which candidate they would choose since slavery was such a big topic. The Northerners selected Stephen Douglas for his opposition of slavery, and the Southerners selected John Breckinridge, a pro-slavery candidate. The Constitutional Union Party, which was made of upset Democrats, Unionists, and past Whigs, selected John Bell as their candidate. His policy was on creating the Missouri Compromise to gain the support of Democratic voters who were upset about the division of slavery.

Illustration of how votes were distributed

On November 6th of 1860, people went to go cast their votes for their top choice. Lincoln completely dominated the Northern states and won with 180 votes from the electoral college. The split in the Democratic voters prevented both candidates from gaining enough votes to win. Douglas ended up with only 12 electoral votes.

    What is so amazing about Lincoln's victory is that he won without the help from southern states, and he ended up having less than 40 percent of the popular votes.

 After his election, the Unites States was torn to pieces, the southern states seceded, and thus the civil war begins. This election has been the most controversial one until the election of 2016.